A carbon overcoat with low surface roughness can be vital for reducing fly height to achieve high areal density. In current hard disk media, the surface roughness of the carbon overcoat is determined by the roughness of the magnetic layers. More specifically, the carbon overcoat is conformal so that the roughness of the media is largely determined by the media structure beneath the carbon. The carbon overcoat roughness is typically about 3.8 to 4.0 angstroms (Å) due to the columnar structure of the magnetic layers of media for perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). In the case of energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) type media, the carbon overcoat roughness is even higher (e.g., about 5 Å to 7 Å) due to the high temperature alloys used in the magnetic structure. One approach to reduce the surface roughness is to increase the carbon thickness. Increasing carbon thickness tends to planarize the media surface as carbon fills in the valleys between the media grain structure. However, the problem with simply increasing carbon thickness to reduce roughness is that the magnetic spacing (e.g., distance from the media surface to the magnetic recording layer) increases so recording performance degrades significantly.